Sheffield Wednesday fans to say emotional goodbye to much-loved fan, landlord and friend to ex-stars
Sheffield Wednesday has lost one of its most passionate supporters after John Tompkins died this week at the age of 68.
De La Salle Boys College, sometime in the early 1970s. Students turn their heads to the sound of commotion outside as the headteacher bellows down into the playing fields with an ambitious eagerness. “Tompkins! Get back here, Tompkins!”
Somewhere in the middle-distance, scarpering through the bushes at the perimeter of the school grounds with a chuckle and a wave was a teenage John Tompkins. He’d booked to board a Sheffield Wednesday supporters coach for a midweek away game in London and decided he couldn’t miss it. For John and for Wednesday, the promise of punishment was inconsequential.
It is just one of a great many stories of a lifelong Wednesdayite well-known and much-loved by many within the club’s fanbase and throughout the city. Latterly vice-chairman of the newly-founded Wednesday Voice supporters group, John died on Tuesday at the age of 68 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in April this year. Family say he’d deteriorated following treatment in recent weeks.
Supporters attending Saturday’s S6 clash with Stockport County are invited to join in a 68th-minute applause for the lifelong Wednesdayite who first fell in love with the club when taken to watch them by his father as a boy and whose final away trip saw him take the stands at Oxford United dressed as Super Mario. He went on to become a firm friend to a number of ex-players, none more so than Carlton Palmer, and the family have had messages of condolence from football figures as notable as Harry Redknapp.
“Sheffield Wednesday meant everything to him,” his daughter Alex explained to The Star this week in a call that occasionally wobbled with emotion but was bursting with pride throughout. “It was something that was always such a big part of him and he was proud to have been so involved in it. He was such an infectious person, he knew so many people and everybody loved him. We’ve had so many nice messages
“When he was in his coma we had a journal in the hospital that people would come and write in. I wrote that Wednesday were top of the league. How can he have missed that?”
Having trained as an electrician in his early days, John went on to own a number of ‘bits and bobs shops’ across the country and for the last decade was landlord of the Devonshire Arms in Middle Handley, which he ran with his beloved family and regarded as his pride and joy.
That Wednesday are top of the league and at the outset of what feels to be a bright new dawn will have come as comfort to John, who throughout its darkest days in the last 18 months or so was one of a number of active supporters to lend a hand to efforts to place the club in better hands and out of the clutches of Dejphon Chansiri. Owls administrator Kris Wigfield has made public the support he received from John during his time at the frontline of the push.
Such was his passion, he had a hand in introducing at least one interested party to the administrators and acted as a conduit in connecting others involved, both before and after the club was placed into the administration process.
“I feel like he had a part to play in that, in making sure that they didn't they didn't lose it,” Alex said. “He’d just keep saying ‘We're not losing this club’. He was just so passionate about it. He was a connector of people and he would find somebody's details through someone else, pass them on or say, ‘Can you get in touch?’ Anybody who might be interested or able to help. He wouldn’t let it die.
“Carlton would text us every day to see how he’s got on, what’s happening. Terry Curran, Roger Wylde, Chris Turner, John Sheridan, they're all people that he's become friends with and they visit the pub, they know us as a family. I've grown up being around those kinds of ex-players and he loved it. He was so proud to have them as friends, he'd get him to come and meet people that needed it and if somebody said needed something signed, he’d sort it for them.”
As is so often the case in the passionate, whirlwind world of Wednesdayism, the fandom has been passed down. His two daughters were told in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t marry a Unitedite and when one of Alex’s early boyfriends left his car outside John’s house when the couple went out on a date, he returned to find that a Blades sticker had been unceremoniously removed. Luckily, the two girls both married passionate Owls and it was with his sons-in-law that he would attend matches in the last few years.
“I was a daddy’s girl so I went with him a lot,” Alex said. “It was drummed into us from an early age and when we were really little it wouldn’t be nursery rhymes we’d learn, it was Wednesday songs. Our mum would go mad, there was one song that we picked up that was about ‘swinging a chain’ down Penistone Road. She made him teach us that the song was about ‘swinging a handbag’.
“I was a season ticket holder with my dad for many years, we did the Cardiff play-off final together, he’d get us a box and take us all. Wednesday was a big, a big part of that growing up with him. We’ve had so many lovely messages from all sorts of people and it’s been nice to see how many people have said such nice things about him. He loved Wednesday and everything about it.”
Many of the family will be there to witness the minute’s applause on Saturday. He leaves behind Jackie, his wife of 51 years, two daughters in Alex and Victoria and three grandchildren - as well as a lifelong love affair with Sheffield Wednesday.